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Seven faculty members among inaugural group of SIAM fellows

Posted May 11, 2009; 09:45 a.m.

by Kitta MacPherson

Seven Princeton faculty members have been elected to the inaugural group of fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

The 12,000-member organization created the SIAM Fellows Program this year to recognize those who have made outstanding contributions to the field. The fellows include 183 men and women from five continents who work in academia, industry and government laboratories.

• Ingrid Daubechies, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics, for contributions to the theory of wavelets and computational harmonic analysis.

• Weinan E, a professor of mathematics and applied and computational mathematics, for analysis of multiscale and stochastic problems.

• Harold Kuhn, professor emeritus of mathematical economics, for seminal contributions to game theory and to linear and nonlinear programming, and for leadership of SIAM in its early years (he was president of the organization in 1954-55).

• Simon Levin, the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, for contributions to mathematical biology and ecology.

• Robert Tarjan, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science, for the design and analysis of algorithms.

• Salvatore Torquato, a professor of chemistry and the Princeton Institute for Science and Technology of Materials, for contributions to the mathematics of packings and materials.

Using criteria approved by the membership, the initial fellows were selected from among SIAM members for which certain previous recognition places them clearly among those intended to be recognized by this program. They include members of certain national academies and corporate and laboratory fellowship programs, recipients of major prizes, recent editors of society journals and former society presidents.

"The announcement of the first class of SIAM fellows is an important milestone for the applied mathematics and computational science community," said Douglas Arnold, SIAM's president. "Their contributions are truly outstanding."

The initial group will be honored in July at SIAM's annual meeting in Denver.

The society is an international organization made up of applied and computational mathematicians, computer scientists, and other scientists and engineers.